Note: This page is no longer updated. For current news, please see the monthly notes in the Report Summary.

November 2013 -- Highlights

A new page, "RFC Status
Changes", has been released that lists the RFCs whose statuses
have changed since publication. The list indicates the date of the
status change and links to the Document or Protocol
Action or the RFC requesting the change are provided where possible.

In addition, the RFC Editor is retiring the practice of publishing RFCs xx99,
the Request for Comments Summary for RFC Numbers xx00-xx99 because this
information is readily available online (e.g., search results). RFC numbers
typically reserved for these documents (i.e., numbers ending with 99) may be
assigned to future RFCs. See
the message
to the IETF Announce list and the discussion on the RFC Interest list
for more information
(October
and November
mail).

March 2013 -- Highlights

On 14 March 2013, the IAB approved for publication the RFC Series Format
Requirements and Future Development draft. This document sets the current
requirements and direction for the format of RFCs and indicates that there will
be changes forthcoming to both the traditional 100% ASCII format as well as to
the RFC Style Guide.

January 2013 -- Highlights

2012 was a intense year of progress and change for the RFC Editor. With a new RFC Series Editor, a revival of the RFC Format discussion, several changes to the RFC Editor website, the beta rollout of a new search page, and 338 RFCs published, the RFC Editor is picking up the pace for an even more intense 2013.
2013 starts with final comments being received on the RFC Format Requirements draft and ramp up of the work on the Style Guide.

September 2012 -- Highlights

The RFC Series Format Development draft describing the requirements for changes in the format for RFCs has been posted. Discussions regarding the requirements will ooccur on the rfc-interest mailing list and at a BoF at IETF #85.

Even before the Web was invented, ISI offered an SMTP-based online search and
retrieval service. With a few software patches over the years, this now rather
crufty Perl code has continued to provide service.

However, maintenance of this very old code is not feasible, so ISI and AMS did
not attempt to transition it to AMS. The RFC Editor has decided to de-commit
the rfc-info service. It is rare today that a user does not have access to a
web browser. However, the rfc-info mailbox has been redirected to
rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org, and Production House staff will respond to email to
the old address.

11 January 2010 -- RFC Editor Transition Will Take Place on 12
January 2010

Transition from USC/ISI to AMS will take place on 12 January 2010.
During this time, the static RFC Editor pages at
rfc-editor.org will continue to be available, including RFC and
errata search and retrieval. However, the errata submission and
verification portals will be temporarily disabled. Additionally,
email sent to the RFC Editor will not be read or processed until after
the transition is complete. For more information, please see the
announcement available at http://www.ietf.org/ibin/c5i?mid=6&rid=49&gid=0&k1=934&k2=7324&tid=1263251951.

The IETF Trust has adopted a new version of the Trust Legal Provisions
(TLP 4.0), which addresses the requests from the RFC Editor (RFC 5744), the
IRTF (RFC
5743), and the IAB (RFC 5745) for the
Trust to manage the outgoing rights for documents originating in their
streams.

The approval of TLP 4.0 allows for the Independent and the IRTF stream
documents to be published. The RFC Editor will be working to update
the files accordingly and will contact the authors when the updated
documents can be viewed.

24 December 2009 -- RFC 5741, RFC Streams, Headers,
and Boilerplates

With the publication of RFC 5741, the headers and
boilerplate material
for each document has changed. RFC document headers will now indicate
the stream that originated the document, and the Status of This Memo
will indicate the level of review associated with the document.
Julian Reschke has put together a document that details the various
combinations; please
see http://greenbytes.de/tech/webdav/draft-reschke-hab-05.html.

29 July 2009 -- Publication of Independent and IRTF Stream Documents

The publication of Independent and IRTF stream documents continues to be suspended
while the streams work with the Trust to identify the appropriate
copyright for these documents.

On 12 February 2009, the IETF Trust announced a revision to the "Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents", effective 15 February
2009, which contains optional text in Section 6.c.iii to address the
issue of pre-RFC 5378 material. Please review RFC 5378 and the text
located at http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info/.
The RFC Editor will update the copyright notice and legends of
documents in our queue accordingly.

For more information regarding the copyright notice and legends,
please see the discussion at ietf@ietf.org. Also, you can send
copyright questions to copyright-questions@ietf.org.

Independent Submissions publications are on hold until the RFC Editor
has made a decision regarding the copyright to be applied to
Independent stream documents. This is in progress and we expect to
have this issue resolved shortly.

15 January 2009 -- RFC Publication Resumed

The publication of BCP 78/RFC 5378 has caused some transitional issues
that require the RFC Editor to temporarily suspend publication. The
RFC Editor is only publishing RFCs if each author explicitly approves
the RFC 5378 copyright notice and legends. If the authors cannot
agree to the terms of the RFC 5378 copyright notice and legends, the
document will be placed on hold until the issues have been resolved.

06 January 2009 -- RFC Publication Suspended

The publication of BCP 78/RFC 5378 has caused some transitional issues
that require the RFC Editor to temporarily suspend publication. We
are working with the appropriate parties to determine the process
moving forward. We will provide an update shortly and an email to
explain the proper process.

10 November 2008 -- Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents

With the publication of BCP 78/RFC 5378,
"Rights Contributors Provide to the IETF
Trust", the RFC Editor has adopted a new IETF copyright policy.
The RFC Editor will now include the following Copyright Notice, which
will appear on the front page of RFCs:

Copyright (c) YYYY IETF Trust and the persons identified as the
document authors. All rights reserved.
This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal
Provisions Relating to IETF Documents
(http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of
publication of this document. Please review these documents
carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with
respect to this document.

The Full Copyright Statement, which was the standard last page of an
RFC, will no longer be included in RFCs.

Additionally, Independent Submissions publications are on hold until
the RFC Editor has made a decision regarding the copyright to be
applied to Independent stream documents. This is in progress and we
expect to have this issue resolved shortly.

1 October 2008 -- ISSN Number

The RFC series has now been assigned a universal ISSN number,
bringing it into the world of librarians. This number is displayed
on the main web page.

1 October 2008 -- New Queue Display File

The file queue.html is updated daily to display the current "Publication
queue" button on the main web page. We recently created a new version of
this queue, file queue2.html (http://www.rfc-editor.org/queue2.html).
Its major new features are:

The grouping of drafts in the queue now reflects the actual
document streams -- IETF (4 groups), IRTF, IAB, and
independent submissions.

A new search capability will take you directly to the draft(s) whose
queue status you want to know.

It now returns HTTP hyperlinks, not FTP hyperlinks, for accessing Internet
Draft text.

It has a link to a search engine that returns the RFC Editor state
change histories of all drafts we have processed since mid 1999.

It shows the current queue statistics that we send weekly to
the IETF chair, the IAB chair, and the IAD.

The "Publication Queue" link on the main page now points to queue2.html.
However, we intend to maintain queue.html as well as queue2.html,
so that queue.html can be a stable source for "screen scrapers".

Corresponding to the new queue2.html, there is also a queue2.xml. This
differs from queue.xml in tag changes to more accurately reflect
component semantics. Additional informartion may be added to
queue2.html, .xml in the future.

12 November 2007 -- RFC Errata System

The RFC Editor has transitioned to a new errata system, which
allows for online errata submission. Please see:

The records have
been updated to include all reports from the
pending file.

The process allows for SSPs (stream-specific parties) to
edit, verify, or reject reports using an online verification system.

21 August 2007 -- Changes to RFC Boilerplate

With the approval of the IAOC, the RFC Editor will make two minor
changes (deletions) from the standard RFC boilerplate in future RFC
publications.

First, the "Copyright (C) The IETF Trust" declaration will be removed
from the front page of future RFCs. We have known for a long time that
this declaration is redundant with the complete boilerplate at the end
of the documents, but inertia kept it alive. Second, the funding
acknowledgment to the Internet Society at the end of the document will
be removed. This acknowledgment was added around 1998 when funding
shifted from US Government to the Internet Society, and at a time when
the Internet Society was not yet closely linked into the IETF
community. Much has changed since then, including the establishment of
the IAOC and the IAD. The funding acknowledgment no longer seems
necessary, and it will be dropped from future RFCs.

15 March 2007 -- Intellectual Property Rights RFCs

In October 2006, the RFC Editor published RFC 4748 as an update to
RFC
3978, which concerns RFC copyrights. Together, these documents
form BCP 78.

RFC 3978
obsoletes RFC
3667 as BCP 78. The revisions incorporate very minor changes in
the boilerplate to recognize the IETF Trust. The RFC Editor's
copyright web page was updated accordingly. This web page also has links to
previous versions of the RFC Editor copyright rules.

15 December 2006 -- New RFC Editor Web Pages

As we have added new material over the past 8 years, the RFC Editor
web site has grown increasingly confusing. We have now updated the
main page and several of the subsidiary pages. The result should be
to make the more important information immediately available and to
make it easier to find what you want.
Please address comments and suggestions to us at rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org.

12 November 2006 -- Joyce Reynolds Departs

The RFC Editor is saddened by the departure of Joyce Reynolds
from the RFC Editor staff. She has left ISI to take on a new and
challenging job assignment elsewhere. The brass ring came by, and she
grabbed it!

Over many years, Joyce has made major contributions to the IANA, to the
RFC Editor, and to the IETF.

She worked with Jon Postel to perform the IANA functions, leaving
her name on many related RFCs. She was IANA liaison to the IESG
1998-2001 and consulted with IANA after they separated from ISI.
She played a key early role in shaping the protocol parameter
registration function.

Joyce has been a member of the IETF since 1988. She developed,
organized, and led the User Services area of the IETF from 1988-1998,
and was thus an IESG member. In her User Services role, she was an
international keynote speakder and panelist in over 90 conferences
around the world, spreading the word on the Internet. She established
the user-service oriented document subseries of RFCs, the FYIs.
She worked with Jon on documenting a number of protocol specifications,
including POP, FTP, and Telnet Options.

For a number of years, Joyce worked with Jon Postel on editing RFCs.
Since 1998, she has been co-leader of the RFC Editor function, and she
performed the final quality control function on most RFC publications.
She also served as RFC Editor liaison to the IAB and to the IESG. Her
knowledge of the IETF process and community and her good judgment were
immensely helpful, and we will miss her help and advice a great deal.

We expect that Joyce will still have a presence in the IETF, but she
will be much missed at ISI! We know that Jon Postel joins us in
wishing her the very best future in her new job.

8 June 2006 -- New Rules for Independent Submissions

These web pages and various RFCs explain that the RFC Editor publishes
two classes of documents: IETF documents and independent
submissions. In the past, editorial responsibility for independent
submissions has resided with the RFC Editor, in consultation with the
RFC Editorial
Board and limited by the need for consistency with the IETF
standards process. Under IAB leadership, the IETF community is now
undertaking to redefine the rules for RFC independent submissions. The
IAB has made the following announcement:

As part its role in supporting the RFC Editor function, the Internet
Architecture Board (IAB) has created a public mailing list for the
discussion of the RFC Independent Submissions process.
The purpose of this discussion is to achieve consensus, in the coming
weeks, on a process for fair and appropriate approval of independent
submissions to the RFC series. These are separate from IETF, IAB or
IRTF approved submissions.
Individuals familiar with the RFC series and working in the Internet
research and engineering community are invited to join this mailing
list and participate.
independent < at > ietf.org
http://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/independent
There is an initial draft proposal, available at
http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-klensin-rfc-independent-02.txt

17 January 2006 -- State Change Messages to Authors

The RFC Editor has added a new informational service to authors.
Whenever a document enters the editorial queue, changes its state in
the queue, or leaves the queue, an email message summarizing the state
change is now being sent automatically to the authors. This message is
for information only; it does not replace existing messages to authors,
such as AUTH48 messages.

Here are examples of such messages:

The document draft-ietf-sipping-conferencing-framework-05
has hanged from EDIT*R state to RFC-EDITOR state.
The document draft-ietf-avt-uncomp-video-ext-01 has
changed from EDIT*A state to EDIT state.

If present, the suffix "*A" in the state listed in this message means:
"IANA actions are needed". This is an encoding of the keyword
"IANA" in the queue entry for the Draft.

If present, the suffix "*R" in the state listed in this message means:
"Contains one or more normative references to drafts that are not yet
published." Any such references are detailed after the keyword
"REF" in the queue entry for the Draft.

15 November 2005 -- Errata Processing Delayed

At the present time, the RFC Editor is concentrating our efforts on
reducing the editing backlog. One of the tasks we are unable to perform
as a result is processing and posting new errata items on
the Errata page.
Since some reported errata items are important, we have put online the
mbox mail file containing the recent email correspondence about claimed
errata. The errata in these messages have not been verified or posted,
and they will not be found by links from the search engine.

6 October 2005 -- Queue Generated Automatically

On September 27, the RFC Editor installed a program to automatically
generate the
publication queue file daily from our master database.
The queue file had been maintained manually, which sometimes led
to errors. Our intent in this change was that users should see no differences
(except for lack of errors), but of course there were some initial glitches.
Please notify us of problems with the new queue.

One feature has been added to the queue: each normative reference entry
("REF") now indicates whether the referenced document is in the queue.
Our current policy is to not begin editing a document until all its
normative references are also in the queue (or already published, of
course). For example, the following partial entry shows a document
in the
EDIT state with two unpublished Normative references, one of which
has not been received by the RFC Editor:

The RFC Editor publication
process diagram
has been updated to more accurately reflect the current process.
Significant changes are: (1) to show a new state ISR-AUTH for
independent submissions, and (2) to show that IANA processing and RFC
Editor processing take place in parallel, not sequentially.

28 July 2004 -- RFC Bibliographic Entry File

A file is now available containing a listing of
bibliographic entries for all RFCs, in the reference format preferred by the RFC Editor.
It also shows which RFCs have been obsoleted.

31 March 2004 -- Hyperlinks within Queue

We've added HTML anchors to entries in the RFC Editor
queue, to allow linking directly to the queue entry for a document of interest.
The URL will be:

http://www.rfc-editor.org/queue.html#draft-name

where "draft-name" is the stem of the Internet Draft name, without the
version number or .txt suffix.
For example, try:

http://www.rfc-editor.org/queue.html#draft-ietf-sip-referredby

31 March 2004 -- Errata Linked from Search Results

The RFC Editor's RFC search engine is now linked to our Errata data
base. In a search result line, the "More Info" field, in addition to
Obsoletes and Updates entries, will have an "Errata" hyperlink for any
RFC for which a correction has been noted. Clicking on that link will
take you directly to the Errata entry for that RFC.

EG try searching for 3885.

15 March 2004 -- RFC Interest List

The RFC Editor has created a new mailing list,
rfc-interest@rfc-editor.org.

This list was created to facilitate community discussion on the RFC series and
to make suggestions about RFC Editor functions. The RFC Editor hopes
that this mailing list will provide a focal point for input, information,
and discussion about the details of the RFC process, as well as an
archive to avoid the continual re-hashing of some issues. Topics
appropriate to this list may include formatting, tools, style,
content, and indexing aspects of the RFC series. It will not be used for
discussion of the IETF standards process, general IETF organizational
issues, or issues for which the NOTE WELL admonition is needed for
IPR reasons.
The posting policy is subscriber-only to reduce spam. It will
initially be unmoderated, but the RFC Editor will cut off any
discussions that are inappropriate according to the guidelines above.
Subscribe at the following address:

http://www.rfc-editor.org/mailman/listinfo/rfc-interest

Archives are available at:

http://www.rfc-editor.org/pipermail/rfc-interest/

18 February 2004 -- Intellectual Property RFCs

Today the RFC Editor published two RFCs that clarify
and elaborate the rules for copyrights on RFCs as well as
the RFC boilerplate for intellectual property rights. This
change was developed by the IPR working group and adopted by
community consensus. The RFCs are "IETF Rights in
Contributions", RFC 3667 (BCP 78) and "Intellectual Property
Rights in IETF Technology", RFC 3668 (BCP 79). Beginning today,
the RFC Editor will use the new rules for all RFC publication.

For the implications of these new rules for RFCs, see the new RFC Editor
web page.

10 December 2003

The RFC Editor has upgraded the rsync server based on
this
advisory. Instructions for using rsync to maintain a mirror
of RFCs and Internet Drafts can be found here.

10 September 2003 -- Restoration of Corrupted Files

Several years ago, some corruption of unknown source
occurred in
several of the rfcxxxx.ps files in the RFC Editor directory. We have
no way to recreate such Postscript files, and in most cases
the original authors are unable to recreate them either. Today we
restored rfc1195.ps and rfc1279.ps, using copies maintained by others
on the Internet. We appreciate the help of Lawrence D'Oliveiro.

9 September 2003 -- rfc-index.html Available

The RFC Editor web site now contains an XML version of the
complete RFC index file. This file, rfc-index.xml, is updated daily to
match the venerable textual index file, rfc-index.txt. The
corresponding XML schema is rfc-index.xsd. All three files are
available on the
RFC Database
page of the RFC Editor web site.

8 January 2003 -- TAR/ZIP Files in PDF Format

We have extended the repository of tar/zip files
containing the complete set of RFCs, recent changes, and
subsets of 500 to include copies in PDF format
— enabling proper page breaks when printed from
Microsoft Windows applications. More information is
available on the download
web page.

The primary version of every RFC is encoded as an ASCII text file,
which was once the Lingua Franca of the computer world. However, users
of Microsoft Windows often have difficulty displaying vanilla
ASCII text files with the correct pagination. To meet this need, the
RFC Editor will henceforth provide a PDF format version of every RFC.

Corresponding to every ASCII file ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/rfcxxxx.txt,
there is a PDF file:

ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/pdfrfc/rfcxxxx.txt.pdf.

The RFC search engine at www.rfc-editor.org/rfcsearch.html now
has buttons labeled:

RFC File: [X] ASCII+ [ ] PDF.

Choosing "PDF" will return the PDF version when the Number hyperlink
is activated.

14 March 2002 -- Updated RFC Editor Web Pages

The RFC Editor web pages have been reformatted for greater convenience.

19 February 2002

RFC readers should be aware that there are many Web sites that
mirror RFCs and various forms of RFC indexes, but that these sites
vary a great deal in reliability. Some contain factually incorrect
information, and some are simply out of date. For the latest and most
correct RFC information, go to the RFC
Editor web site.

25 January 2002

RFC Editor Report from IETF-52, Salt Lake City, is now available
online.
Postscript or
PDF.

We have added a new field to the rfc index database: "pub-status",
the Status with which the RFC was originally published. Normally Status
and Pub-Status will be the same, but they will differ in certain cases
-- e.g., Standards moved to Historic, or standards-track documents
upgraded without republication. When they do differ, both will be
shown in the results of the RFC
search engine. E.g., try searching on "1745" (i.e., for RFC 1745).

8 October 2001

The RFC search
engine now distinguishes current RFCs from obsoleted RFCs. The
title field of the index entry for permanent RFCs is now shown in
bold face.

28 August 2001

The repository of private enterprise MIBs from 1990-1998, which
used to be available from ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/mib/, is now accessible
from the
Private MIBs directory.

In addition, the standardized MIBs defined in RFC1229-1233 are
now in the directory.

14 August 2001

For almost 10 years ISI has provided Web access and search capability
for RFCs, Internet Drafts, IAB minutes, and historical Internet-related
documents at http://info.internet.isi.edu. This service used a very
early Web server which is very obsolete, and ISI has decommissioned
that URL.

The RFC Editor page
now provide access to the primary RFC repository, using
a search engine. It also provides access to a search
engine for a secondary Internet Drafts repository,
mirrored from ietf.org.

Thanks to Mark Handley (ACIRI), we have been able to fix a corrupted
line in file rfc1279.ps. As a result, readable Postscript and PDF
versions are now available for RFC 1129 (Callon, "Use of OSI IS-IS
for Routing in TCP/IP and Dual Environments"). Similar surgery on
RFC 1291 (Aggarwal, "Mid-Level Networks: Potential Network Services")
was less successful.

13 May 2001

The RFC index incorrectly listed RFC 1129 as status "UNKNOWN".
This has been corrected to "INFORMATIONAL".

The RFC search
engine has been considerably improved. For example, it now understands
that STDs, FYIs, and BCPs are subseries of the RFC series.

20 November 2000

There is now an errata
Web page containing RFC errors that have been reported to us.

9 August 2000

The tar/zip files containing the complete set of RFCs, recent changes,
and subsets of 500, are all available from a Web
page. Note that there are tar/zip files containing RFCs 3001 through
the latest published; these are updated weekly.

11 July 2000

Following generally favorable comments, the RFC Editor has set a
policy of making all subsidiary versions of RFCs in Postscript (.ps)
available in PDF format as well. Today we used distill to create rfcxxx.pdf
versions of most of the (non-corrupt) rfcxxx.ps files. The `Format:'
clauses of the rfc-index.txt file specifies the size of .pdf files
when they are available. A few failed to translate; on the other hand,
in some cases the .ps version is corrupt but the .pdf version is OK.

5 April 2000

In response to several requests, we have moved the tar/zip files
of all RFCs to the FTPable directory ftp://ftp.rfc-editor.org/in-notes/tar.

16 Mar 2000

In response to several queries: It has been suggested that Postsript
(.ps) versions of RFCs should also be available in .pdf format. This
seems reasonable, but we have not yet made it a policy. Comments for/against
to rfc-editor@rfc-editor.org would be welcome.

Meanwhile, we have a particular problem with RFC1142, a very large
and complex RFC (OSI IS-IS definition). We found that both the .ps
and the .txt files were mangled. Dave Oran supplied us with the
original base document, which is in .pdf. We have used it to renew
rfc1142.ps and are working on converting it to a new rfc1142.txt
(stay tuned). In any case, it seemed desirable to make the original
.pdf file available in the RFC editor archive, so rfc1142.pdf has
appeared.

28 Feb 2000

The RFC Editor has tentatively adopted a guideline on the mandatory
inclusion of a Table of Contents in new RFCs: an RFC of 50 or more
pages will generally be REQUIRED to contain a TOC. This limit was
set high as a first cut, and experience may cause it to be lowered.

In general, we want to encourage the inclusion of a TOC in all
except the shortest RFCs. A TOC of the appropriate density can be
a significant aid to readers. Note that automatic TOC generation
by your text preparation tool may produce a TOC that is too dense
(and long) to be really useful. If many successive TOC entries point
to the same page, your TOC probably needs to be "thinned".

The TOC must be positioned after the Abstract and before the Introduction
section (i.e., after the boiler plate and before the body) of your
RFC.

26 Feb 2000

There is a new Internet
Archaeology Web page, collecting references to early Internet-related
documents that the RFC Editor has collected over the years.

24 Feb 2000

The entire RFC series, updated weekly, is now available as a Zip
file for Windows systems as well as a tar.gz file for Unix systems.